"For once I didn't feel like I was staring into the sun. I'm rising to my wife's level of madness. Because I can feel her changing me again: I was a callow boy, and then a man, good and bad. Now at last I'm the hero. I am the one to root for in the never-ending war story of our marriage. It's a story I can live with. Hell, at this point, I can't imagine my story without Amy. She is my forever antagonist.
We are one long frightening climax.”
-Nick Dunne, Gone Girl
Marriage is supposed to be an exemplification of love. You love your boyfriend, you adore your girlfriend, so you marry them. You create a bond that shows the unconditional love you have another. But does it last? Is it worth it?
Gone Girl raises some serious questions about marriage. What becomes of us after marriage? Do we marry the person we deserve? What do we do when our spouse becomes unidentifiable to the person that we married? Separately, Nick and Amy are pretty terrible on their own, but together? They are grotesque. It's an odd paradox how they simultaneously make each other better but also worse. It's an exceptional example how the person you choose to marry unquestioningly influences you, so you better make a good choice.
At the end of the novel, we see Amy return and her and Nick settle back into life as a dysfunctional married couple. At first, as a reader, I felt sympathetic for Nick: sure he'd made a few bad decisions, but did he really deserve a lifetime with a psychopathic murderer? But then, I saw it. Nick and Amy are one in the same. While Nick isn't as similar in the murderous scheming and plotting, he feeds off of the chaos and drama that Amy brings to his life. Amy's game makes them both realize that they deserve one another, and that they could never truly be satisfied in a normal relationship. "Who would I be without Amy to react to," Nick wonders. "Because she was right: As a man, I had been my most impressive when I loved her- and I was my next best self when I hated her. I had known Amy only seven years, but I couldn't go back to life without her. Because she was right: I couldn't return to an average life. I'd known it before she'd said a word" (532). Amy makes Nick the man he wants to be and Amy needs Nick to feel in control of her life; it's a messed up symbiotic relationship. They are perfect vampires from How To Read Literature Like A Professor, feeding off of each other's youth, happiness, and vitality until one of them croaks. They are happy and miserable at the same time, but they like it like that so that they can blame the other person for their dissatisfaction in their life. They want the challenge of each other in their life, Amy saying, "But if love has no boundaries, no limits, no conditions, why should anyone try to do the right thing ever? If I know I am loved no matter what, where is the challenge?” (554). They are both the master and the slave, the hero and the villain, the husband and the wife, and it works for them.
We are one long frightening climax.”
-Nick Dunne, Gone Girl
Marriage is supposed to be an exemplification of love. You love your boyfriend, you adore your girlfriend, so you marry them. You create a bond that shows the unconditional love you have another. But does it last? Is it worth it?
Gone Girl raises some serious questions about marriage. What becomes of us after marriage? Do we marry the person we deserve? What do we do when our spouse becomes unidentifiable to the person that we married? Separately, Nick and Amy are pretty terrible on their own, but together? They are grotesque. It's an odd paradox how they simultaneously make each other better but also worse. It's an exceptional example how the person you choose to marry unquestioningly influences you, so you better make a good choice.
At the end of the novel, we see Amy return and her and Nick settle back into life as a dysfunctional married couple. At first, as a reader, I felt sympathetic for Nick: sure he'd made a few bad decisions, but did he really deserve a lifetime with a psychopathic murderer? But then, I saw it. Nick and Amy are one in the same. While Nick isn't as similar in the murderous scheming and plotting, he feeds off of the chaos and drama that Amy brings to his life. Amy's game makes them both realize that they deserve one another, and that they could never truly be satisfied in a normal relationship. "Who would I be without Amy to react to," Nick wonders. "Because she was right: As a man, I had been my most impressive when I loved her- and I was my next best self when I hated her. I had known Amy only seven years, but I couldn't go back to life without her. Because she was right: I couldn't return to an average life. I'd known it before she'd said a word" (532). Amy makes Nick the man he wants to be and Amy needs Nick to feel in control of her life; it's a messed up symbiotic relationship. They are perfect vampires from How To Read Literature Like A Professor, feeding off of each other's youth, happiness, and vitality until one of them croaks. They are happy and miserable at the same time, but they like it like that so that they can blame the other person for their dissatisfaction in their life. They want the challenge of each other in their life, Amy saying, "But if love has no boundaries, no limits, no conditions, why should anyone try to do the right thing ever? If I know I am loved no matter what, where is the challenge?” (554). They are both the master and the slave, the hero and the villain, the husband and the wife, and it works for them.